Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Review of 5 RCTs (n=666) found low‐certainty evidence that either continuation or discontinuation of antiplatelet therapy before non‐cardiac surgery may make little or no difference to mortality, bleeding requiring surgical intervention, or ischaemic events.
Boehringer Ingelheim
Following the recent license extension of Actilyse® (alteplase) to include adolescents of 16-17 years in the acute ischaemic stroke indication, Boehringer Ingelheim is requesting collection of further data on safety and efficacy in this population.
British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology
Review of 10 studies notes in studies reporting clinician preference, DOACs were 1st choice over warfarin in naïve patients based on perceptions of evidence of effectiveness equivalent/superior to warfarin and superior safety. There were concerns about managing over-anticoagulation.
Annals of Internal Medicine
Markov model decision analysis (n=33,434) with warfarin as base case, and DOACs modeled in secondary analysis found variation in published AF stroke rates for patients not on anticoagulants results in multifold variation in net clinical benefit of anticoagulation.
Circulation
RCT prematurely terminated after enrolling 696 patients in 38 months did not establish non-inferiority of oral anticoagulation (OAC) alone to combined OAC and antiplatelet therapy in patients with AF and stable coronary artery disease beyond 1 year after stenting.
Stroke
Analysis of pharmacy claims data found increased oral anticoagulant use (from 51.6% to 73.8%) contributed to marked reduction of ischaemic strokes (2.01/100 person-years in 2012 to 1.17 in 2017; incidence rate ratio, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.52–0.65) without increasing bleeding rates.
Non–Vitamin K Antagonist Oral Anticoagulants for Mechanical Heart Valves: Is the Door Still Open?
Circulation
Mechanical valves currently pose absolute contraindication to DOACs based on results of single phase II study (RE-ALIGN). Article calls on several aspects of both preclinical studies and RE-ALIGN to be critically re-evaluated to identify patients most likely to benefit from DOACs.
AF screening: who is calling the tune?
Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin
Editorial highlights need to recognise gaps in evidence for population screening (PS), uncertainty over harm:benefit ratio of anticoagulation in people at lower risk, impact of labelling people with AF diagnosis, and guard against industry-led incremental drift to widespread PS.
The Lancet
This RCT (n=65) demonstrated that vorapaxar, a licensed inhibitor of proteinase activated receptor-1, had no effect on D-dimer concentrations in HIV-infected patients receiving stable antiretroviral therapy but at risk of poor outcomes.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
There were no eligible trials in people on continuous DOAC treatment. For vitamin K antagonists (4 studies; n=253) there seems to be a beneficial effect of locally applied tranexamic acid; however definitive conclusions cannot be made due to limitations of the evidence.
The above records have been identified by UKMi and feature in the NICE Medicines Awareness Service. Further details on this service can be found at:
http://www.evidence.nhs.uk/about-evidence-services/content-and-sources/medicines-information/new-medicines-awareness-services